4D’s Top Trends for 2023 – Part 2

by Philippa Waller | Mar 6, 2023 | 4D Business Storytelling, 4D Diversity & Inclusion Training, 4D Emerging Talent, 4D Essential Communication Skills, 4D Leadership Development, 4D Presentation Skills, 4D Virtual Impact

Earlier last month, we introduced our Top 10 Trends for 2023 and a big thank you for the amazing feedback from many of our 4D online friends. Having given you the first top 5 tips (1. Energy 2. UBU- Unphased by Uncertainty 3. Communicating Vision 4. Impact 5. Presentations) it’s now time reveal the last 5 of the Top Ten Trends for 2023. So, here they are…enjoy!

If you haven’t yet, you can read Part 1 here. Also, listen to a commentary of Part 1 on the 4D Human Being Podcast

6. VHV - Virtual and Hybrid Vibe

Hybrid working and learning is here to stay. In 2023 you need to be thinking about your VHV – your Virtual and Hybrid Vibe. There are two key elements here. One, is that fully remote working is over and we will see an expansion of hybrid working and the second is that virtual and hybrid meetings and learning need to be vibrant and engaging.

While many people are still WFH a lot, the focus in 2023 will be much more on a flexible hybrid model. This means individuals will have their own hybrid work schedule – mixing the amount of time they WFH or WFO. It also means we will all be finding ourselves in a lot more meetings, presentations and trainings that have a hybrid audience. Don’t be surprised if this year you find yourself in a training room or creative meeting, in person, where you are partnered with someone on a screen who is dialling in remotely for the same session. The hybrid experience will get better and better, with more and more organisations bringing in specialised tech teams to manage cameras, screens and sound to optimise the hybrid experience and make it as seamless as possible.

Secondly, this expanding virtual and hybrid working world means leaders and teams need to get really good really quickly at creating energised and inclusive hybrid experiences. This means putting a focus on your Virtual and Hybrid Vibe – your hybrid communication, facilitation and navigation skills to keep groups unified, energised and engaged when working across different platforms.

Yes it’s about tech savvy but it’s more about HOW you use the tech and how you keep the connection and collaboration vibe alive every day.

Get a standing desk so that even when dialling in remotely you feel like you are in the room, up on your feet and raring to go
Don’t treat in-the-room and remote participants as two separate groups – partner them up and get them talking across the hybrid divide.

4D has a live Virtual & Hybrid Training as well as our 4DOnDemand Digital Virtual & Hybrid course.

7. Inclusion and Empowerment

In the arena of inclusion in 2023, two key words will be Needs and Neuro-Diversity.

As a year of action, leaders and individuals in 2023 will be looking for tangible behaviours that can move us forward to further inclusivity. The focus will not only be on rights but also on needs. Expanding the topic from dialogue to doing. What is it that individuals and groups need to help them feel more included? What needs to be done to help them feel they are important, that their voice is wanted and that their perspective counts? What tangible, sometimes simple, actions can they themselves take, can their leaders and can their organisations take to really move the dial on inclusion. A huge part of this will be more and more empowerment to a diverse range of individuals, to really put the emphasis on including and trusting a diverse population to feel empowered to act.

This means leaders approaching daily tasks such as creating agendas, having challenging conversations, giving performance reviews or holding team meetings, with an eye toward – how can I do this inclusively? How can I do this in a way that improves this person’s life? How can I do this in a way that fosters connection? Leaders will not only actively include everyone more but also trust others to take the reins and run with new ideas and projects. These actions may be small at first but they will have a big impact.

Inclusion will mean proactively seeking the thoughts and opinions of less outspoken colleagues, people you don’t usually go to, team members who you clash with, stakeholders from different areas of the business, colleagues and customers with diverse backgrounds, perspectives and outlooks. Empowerment will mean upskilling to understand your own blockers and fears to empowering others and recognising what team members need in order to feel empowered to take risks.

The key questions: What do people need to feel included and empowered?

This year will also see much more awareness, inclusion and appreciation of Neuro-diversity – ADD, ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Sensory Perception Disorder and many other neuro-diverse terms will become far more familiar and understood in the workplace.

Neurodiversity is about recognising those who think differently. Depending on how our brains are wired we will all think, move, process information and communicate in different ways. Approximately 15-20% of the population has a neurological difference. Whether someone is officially diagnosed or has recognised they are somewhere on the scale of neuro-diverse, many more people will become much more aware of how very differently we have all been thinking and perceiving for a very long time.

Moreover that neuro-diversity brings strengths to celebrate as well as challenges to accommodate. When it comes to challenges, we need to recognise that environments and systems can do more to meet the needs of neuro-diverse people. When it comes to strengths we will be tapping into the potential and creativity of diverse thinkers a lot more. Inclusion will move from edgy unfamiliarity to an exciting gift that keeps on giving as leaders and teams start to enjoy the richness, ideas and benefits more and more, as well as the fun and enjoyment that an engaged, diverse working environment will bring.

No matter whether you work solo, in a creative pair, a team or a whole organisation all of us can benefit from different thinkers! Also 2023 is a great year for us all to finally recognise that there is no such thing as ‘normal’ and that we all need to finally accept the end of the mythical idea of the mythical norm!

The fact is quite simply – no two people are the same. Even us – identical twins!

What’s more in 2023 it is Neuro-Diversity Celebration Week from the 13th-19th March. A great time to shine a light on this area of D&I.

Tips:

Become a Super-Includer by noticing who isn’t included and actively bringing them in
Move from Feedback to Needback – make those regular check-ins more about what colleagues and team members need in order to feel included and flourish.

Our unique 4D approach that make Diversity & Inclusion Training practical, fun and for everyone

8. WellBeing

We’ve talked about WellBeing for a few years now but in 2023 WellBeing will no longer be just a nice extra or something that organisations talk about but don’t do anything about. This year, will see WellBeing being truly integrated into the working day and week. This isn’t going to simply be about encouraging people to exercise and eat well. It’s going to become a far more integrated WellBeing plan that helps people stay energised, healthy, connected to meaning and purpose and able to manage stress and their nervous system – everyday.

Through simple tools and techniques leaders and teams will become super aware and super expert at taking care of their stress levels, work flows, schedules, relationships and conflict hotspots to ensure they move more permanently from survive to thrive.

Productivity it is still a word that is going to be used across organisations but what will become important when it comes to workforce productivity is leaders and organisations getting the balance right between what they want OUT of employees and what they put IN to their people. When it comes to energy, wellbeing, self-resourcing and self-nourishing, leaders and organisations will need to be thinking a lot more about the INPUT employees need before they can expect the OUTPUT they want. Organisations will see a lot more mini-WellBeing interventions in meetings and over coffee breaks.

Through digital platforms and at-desk learning – there will be a lot more practical, quick, research-based tips and techniques on regulating the nervous system and keeping the body and mind in balance moment to moment.

Finally, organisations will see a huge increase in demand for leader psychotherapeutic coaching – what at 4D we call Executive Depth Coaching. Where experts will help your leaders develop at a far deeper, psychotherapeutic and psychological level. Meaning individuals and leaders understand and overcome their unhealthy, maladaptive developmental patterns, triggers, hotspots and ego defences – to live and lead from a far more integrated and healthier place.

Tips:

Don’t just think nutrition and exercise, think nervous system management, self-regulation, breathing, mini breaks/switch offs, and no more back-to-back meetings.
Think WellBeing in 4D – Stop asking How are you doing and start asking what do you need to flourish physically, emotionally, mentally and relationally?

Bringing together expertise in human behaviour, psychology, psychotherapy and counselling – live 4D Workplace WellBeing programmes and our totally unique, energising and super practical 4DOnDemand WellBeing Series

9. Brand

Trend number 9 for 2023 is all about personal branding. We are going to see a shift in how individuals, leaders, influencers and businesses create their narrative, their branding, their profile and their ongoing reputation.

Personal branding will move away from identity and towards interaction. What do we mean by this? This means your personal profile will talk less about your qualities, qualifications, skills and identity and more about what it is like to work with you, be in relationship with you, and interact with you. Whether you are an individual or a business what people are interested in is the ‘experience’ they will have being your colleague or your customer. Yes, it is still about personal expertise but it is more about interpersonal experience. Yes, it is still about product excellence, but it is more about customer experience.

Whether you are a leader in an established multinational corporation or are venturing out on your own, whether you are a global corporation or an SME, your ‘brand experience’ – in the room and online – is going to become a priority.

Your branding needs to reflect the commitment you make to your work, team, employees and customers. It will be about what to expect from you when someone chooses to collaborate or consume with you. What do you guarantee in terms of service and timelines? What values and morals drive your interactions? Will working with you be fun? Intense? Structured? Open to risk? Playful? Fast? Driven? Calm? Spacious? As a customer will you make me feel unique? Safe? Cared for? Heard? A part of your community? Important? Creative?

As a leader, your people are less concerned with your personal brand and more focused on your interpersonal brand. As a business, your customer isn’t interested in you as a dealership but “in you” – as a relationship.

Tips:

Rewrite your online profiles telling people your leader style and what it is like to work for and with you!
Ask your colleagues and customers what is their experience of you – celebrate and publish the go
od stuff and work on the not so good stuff!

For more on developing brand, profile and reputation check out: 4DOnDemand Personal Profile Series

10. PRL – Personalised Remote Learning (Accessibility)

Finally, this year all about personalized and accessible remote learning. As we move more and more to flexible, hybrid working – individual learning and development needs to be just as flexible. People and organisations will be looking for the very best in online and digital training that is relevant, engaging, and accessible for everyone, anywhere, anytime. This means online learning that really captures attention and delivers practical tools that really work. Learning will be hyper-personalised meaning individuals can navigate their own way through training to ensure they get the development and skills they personally need rather than a one-size fits all approach. Leaders and individuals will expect to be able to access shared courses in live online experiences as well as digital video modules that deliver key training in bitesize chunks. Dynamic, engaging digital learning platforms for business are going to explode over the coming years, with those rising to the top offering:

super engaging facilitators
clear tools and techniques
bitesize video modules
interactive exercises
fun graphics and animations
hyper-personalized
real-world practice
tangible application
community chat spaces to share the experience with others

Continuous development is going to be absolutely key for the generations now coming through the workplace. Training and development courses won’t be annual add-ons anymore, they will be fully integrated and woven into the day to day way of working and being right from day one of starting a new job. This means a lot more L&D will take place on digital platforms and eventually in VR worlds where participants will get to practice communication skills and role-play as their avatars or holograms.

Tips:

Start exploring the best digital training platforms for yourself, your teams and your organisation and in the meantime check out SM platforms like Insta and TikTok for quick-fire tips on communication, conflict and collaboration.
What can I say…check out 4DOnDemand for the best in digital online training!

My personal bonus trend for 2023 is ‘Play.’ We will all be looking for a lot more fun, levity and laughter this year so watch out for more fun coming to the workplace in the form of games, podcasts and events as well as lots more live entertainment.

These are now all my Top 10 trends for 2023 – revealed. Don’t know about you but I am excited and curious and ready for the ride. Let’s dive into the uncertainty and enjoy the changes and opportunities ahead.

For us at 4D that’s the best way to live as a human being! Or should I say, as a 4D Human Being!

The Power of Telling Great Stories

by 4dhumanAdmin | Jan 10, 2022 | 4D Business Storytelling, 4D Confidence & Impact Training, 4D Presentation Skills

In this video recording with one of our global clients Philippa explores the extraordinary power of Story.

The Body Still Counts!

by Penelope Waller | Sep 1, 2020 | 4D Essential Communication Skills, 4D Presentation Skills, 4D Virtual Impact

Saying it all, without saying a word… Have we forgotten part of our language skills in the online world?

“You say it best when you say nothing at all…”

(Boyzone, 1999).

It wasn’t easy, but I have indeed managed to start this month’s newsletter with a quote from Boyzone (bear with me readers!) Now whilst I am admittedly a fan of 90’s pop music- and even more so of the film Notting Hill where this song featured – there’s rhyme and reason for the reference. When we think about our communication, how we are going to prepare for a speech, presentation, interview or difficult conversation – we tend to focus on the words, content or the script. And yet we know that as human beings over HALF of what we ‘say’ is not what comes out of our mouths. It comes out of what we say with the rest of our bodies. And this is still true if we are practising social distancing or communicating in an online world. Even though perhaps we may have lost sight of the impact of our bodies in our new world of virtual communication. So, this month it’s time to get physical – and we don’t mean pulling on leggings and going to the gym (now that they are open!). Join us this month as we delve into the intriguing and often underestimated world of Body Language.

Animal Instincts

I speak for each and every one of you when I say you are highly developed, highly intelligent, sensitive, self-aware creatures (I would expect nothing less from our fabulous readers!). And yet… all of us- at our core- are animals.

As animals, we have some basic survival instincts -food, safety and continuation of our species. These instincts existed way before our modern language did and yet somehow, we managed to communicate with each other – and not only survive- but thrive. We had to be very good at not only at signalling our needs and fears but also reading them in others, even when no words were spoken. In our era of modern language and high-speed communication, we have sophisticated and subtle means and methods of communicating. And yet, the hardware of who we are as human beings remains unchanged.

In Paul MacLean’s 3 brain model, our reptilian brain was the first part of the brain to develop and is responsible for protection, safety and non-verbal communication. So, whether we like it or not (or are aware of it or not) we still use our non-verbal communication to provide a wealth of information. AND we are always being read and interpreted by others, based on the non-verbal cues we project. So, imagine the powerful impact we could make every day if we consciously communicated- not only with our words- but with all of our being.

“It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.”

– William Bernbach (1911–1982), American advertising creative director

Posture

So, what about our posture? Well, it’s often something we only think about if we have to go to an osteopath or chiropractor due to back pain. However, an Ohio State University study (2015) showed that holding a slumped posture for 30-minutes could significantly increase stress levels, depression, and fear. On the other hand – maintaining an upright posture can result in greater confidence and lower stress levels. Bear this in mind particularly if you are now working remotely and are sitting for much of the day. Our health and mobility are important, and… let’s keep in mind that there is so much more to our posture and how it is serving us. Looking at a number of studies, evidence suggests that our posture matters more than company hierarchies in terms of making a person think and act more powerfully!

Why is this? Well going back to the caveman… a slumped posture – (head dropped and rounded shoulders) would have been a demonstration of “flight” (fear/submission) posturing and can have a very real neurological and psychological impact on our systems. So, next time you are in a meeting or virtual meeting, even if you are feeling nervous you may want to try this:

1. Sit forward on your chair or stand up and either way – with feet apart and firmly grounded on the floor

2. Shoulders back

3. Chin up/not too tucked in

You may be amazed not only by how you feel but by how you present yourself and ultimately by the words that come out of your mouth. As we say here at 4D, it all starts with the physical…

I recall going through some rather draining legal proceedings a few years back. As anyone who has experienced this will know, it can be intellectually overwhelming and emotionally draining. I recall those feelings and the sense of not having any control or power (a core human need). But one thing I could do was get a hold of was how I showed up: how I behaved and interacted physically. So, I made a conscious and deliberate decision to maintain a strong, grounded posture with shoulders back and head held high. It was incredible to notice how different I felt and also, how it changed the verbal language I used and the way other people responded to me. It was a game-changer.

“Isn’t it odd. We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside”

– Charlie Macksey

Proxemics

Proxemics explain how people treat the space between them and others. It’s a form of nonverbal communication and the distance of the proxemic can make situations either intimidating or acceptable. And what we find acceptable, varies from person-to-person, when it comes to our personal space.

As animals, we have a sense of what physical proxemic feels acceptable and what feels threatening. As you can imagine, smaller animals than us have an even greater sense of this hidden dimension – anyone who has a guinea pig or rabbit will know that it can be hard to catch a sight of them. Yesterday, I was at my sister’s house and I was determined to catch a glimpse of her new guinea pig – Manuel. So, I crept into the room his cage was in. He remained static until I came within 1 metre. and then – boom, he bolted. It was almost like I had tripped a tripwire that caused him to scurry at breakneck speed into his little guinea pig house! Animals’ bodies respond to their intuition and signal their levels of discomfort. I had entered his ‘intimate’ proxemic and all of his body told him to run. Sorry, Manuel!

As human beings we are no different and understanding how to use your space and reading others’ space is crucial for creating the right connections and leaving a good impression. Many of us feel this only too acutely at the moment with the emotional distance that can be created by the extended proxemic of social distancing. It has an impact! And whilst we need to be mindful of keeping our distance to keep our communicates safe, we would do well to recognise there is an impact on how we may make each other feel as well as look to compensate for the distance through other body language strategies.

The 4 Levels of Gesture

Research has demonstrated that in everyday interpersonal communication people spontaneously generate images via hand gestures to accompany their speech. In this way, they help to encode the speech into the listener’s memory by utilising two cognitive aspects: words and images.

The physical act of moving our arms and hands generates energy within our bodies. The higher the level of gestures we make the higher the level of energy we release. But there is also another hidden effect of gestures involving the brain. Psychologists Rizzolatti and Arbib (Language Within Our Grasp 1998) discovered that when we perform an activity, such as gesturing, we activate motor neurons in the brain. Curiously, similar neurons are also activated when we merely watch an activity. These are called mirror neurons.

When we watch someone moving, mirror neurons fire off in our brains and we not only witness a gesture but also experience and feel the gesture in our minds. Watching gestures- or any movement- literally creates an energetic reaction in the brain. This is why watching people dance or sing can be a contagious and emotional experience- and we may feel compelled to express ourselves too! This suggests that gesture can expand the effectiveness of our communication, by improving cognition, opening up different levels of meaning for the listener and also, by boosting energy levels (for both the speaker and the listener).

So how can you utilise the power of gestures: By using specific gestures to accompany your speech you can:

1. Appear more confident

2. Feel more confident

3. Enhance your communications

4. Raise not only your energy but also the energy levels of those who watch or interact with you

Increase the vocabulary available to you in the moment (research shows that restricting hand gestures makes it more difficult to find the right words.)
I often hear comments from people I work with that working remotely limits our ability to use our gestures and whilst there is some truth to that, we are still #always at choice. Push your computer screen back so that you give yourself a wide frame on screen from the chest up (or better still stand up) and get those arms on camera!

Eye contact

Eye contact may seem an obvious element of our physical language, but we can all too often be unaware of where our eyes may be focused and how we may be impacting others. Eye contact can demonstrate in an instance – respect, appreciation, interest, understanding confidence, engagement, making people feel connected and important. AND it can suggest fear, nervousness, disinterest to name just a few. Now that isn’t to say that removing eye contact is not sometimes useful. If you want someone to stop talking or if you have a consistent tricky ‘challenger’ in your audience – gently removing your eye contact after a few seconds is often a great way to change the dynamic.

“The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said”

– Peter Drucker

Create your New Norm

We are responding cognitively all the time to the signals and signs our bodies give us. At the same time, we are also reading other peoples’ body language – perhaps even more than the words that come out of their mouths. And other people are doing the same to us. Over our lives, we have built up patterns of body language. But we can choose to change those behaviours that aren’t serving us anymore. Of course, when it comes to breaking patterns and creating new ones, practice makes perfect.

So – whether you have been consistently working in a face-to-face environment or are soon returning to an office or communal place of work – at 4D we want to encourage you to think about your body language. Trying our new or unfamiliar ideas (such as taking a stronger posture, smiling more than usual or using higher arm gestures) may feel strange at first, but over time, this new pattern of body language will become your new normal. A part of who you are and how you communicate. And…

…don’t imagine that if you are primarily interacting and communicating in a virtual environment that the ‘language’ you are speaking with your body doesn’t matter. On the contrary – it matters even more! Three top reasons to focus on your body language even when in virtual meetings are:

1. Because your mind-body loop will be affected by the physical position and gestures that you choose to do. Remember your body is constantly sending messages to your brain! So your impact even on the phone is affected by how you sit, stand and physically behave.

2. Quite simply, connectivity and communication ARE harder when we’re not face-to-face. So why not use ALL the tools at your disposal to really land your message, build great bonds, influence and communicate with impact.

3. If on a video call no one else has their camera switched on – stand out from the crowd. What a gift to leave an even stronger impression! TURN YOUR CAMERA ON!

What is your body language saying about you?

You can find out more and sign up for our newsletter through our website as well as check out the 4D articles, podcasts, videos and online training programmes. If you’d like us at 4DHB to help you engage your audience, get your messages across online and have some fun…do get in touch.

4D Human Being – helping leaders, teams and individuals consciously communicate with impact every day.

Choose Your Impact

by Philippa Waller | Jul 2, 2020 | 4D Confidence & Impact Training, 4D Diversity & Inclusion Training, 4D Essential Communication Skills, 4D Presentation Skills

Do you focus more on your intentions or your impact? And which one is more important…

This has been a central theme for us at 4D Human Being since we began all those years ago! Working in leadership, communications skills, coaching and development programmes means this subject is incredibly important to us. While we focus heavily on conscious intention, one of our company taglines has for a long time been “Helping Leaders, Teams and Individuals consciously create their impact every day.” So, intention or impact, which should we focus on more…?

This question is not only relevant in terms of organisational leadership and communication. It is relevant to whatever work you do. It is relevant in your personal life. And it is definitely relevant in every single one of your relationships. From the intimate to the every day to the people you may only meet once in your life. And today this topic is hugely relevant when it comes to how we explore and communicate social injustice, systemic racism and any number of inequalities in our communities and in wider society. Whether we are trying to engage our teams with motivational sales targets, whether we are presenting a keynote at a global conference, whether we are trying to keep children interested in online schooling, whether we are navigating our personal relationships through and out of lockdown, or whether we are tackling urgent social justice issues – have we checked in with and set our underlying intention? And even if we have, what is our ultimate impact..?

This article is all about exploring the every day and the very human idea of intention vs impact. Join us as we look at different ways we can help to bring our intentions and our impact into alignment.

Intention vs Impact

How many times, when challenged, have you heard or yourself used the response … “but that wasn’t my intention” or “That wasn’t what I meant.”

I’m going to guess we’ve all heard that excuse and used it ourselves more times than any of us could count. Of course we have. Because so often it will have been true. When there is a breakdown in communication, when wires get crossed, when we accidentally upset someone, when we haven’t been fully conscious of what we were saying… the resulting impact certainly wasn’t our intention. So then surely we’re not to blame?

About twenty years ago a friend of mine told me about an incident in a key cutting shop. She had walked into the shop and inadvertently knocked over a stand with hundreds of ready-to-cut keys on it. The key stand and the keys fell onto an elderly lady. The shop owner and another customer started reprimanding my friend who defended herself by saying it was an accident. She didn’t mean to topple the stand. As she recounted the story to me, still smarting from the reaction from her fellow shoppers, she said “I mean if I had walked into that shop with the sole intention of knocking a key stand onto an old lady – then fair enough, have a go at me. But that was clearly not my intention.”

At the time I fully accepted her position. However, after many years of working in corporate communication skills, I started to see things multi-dimensionally. Because intention and impact need to be taken together. They cannot be isolated. We need to focus on both. Whether we are talking about a disappointing presentation from your boss or an argument with your partner – whether the intention was good or not, the impact is what it is, and we need to take responsibility for both. That’s where learning can come in. That’s when we can take on new information and new skills so that we can begin to take charge of our impact. Not just our intention.

In the case of my well-intended friend, the elderly lady in the shop still had to deal with the shock of a fountain of keys suddenly being showered all over her. If we play with the idea of taking responsibility for the impact of accidentally hurling keys over an innocent customer, then maybe we would then be open to thinking more consciously about how we enter small unfamiliar stores with more caution, care and awareness. That learning could be really useful to us and to other people in the future.

Mind the Gap

As we always say at 4D Human Being, there is pretty much always a gap between our intention and our impact. But by taking responsibility for our impact then we can start to close that gap. And when we close the gap between intention and impact, we really put ourselves in the driver’s seat of our lives. We take a massive step towards living more consciously and with more awareness.

After all we are not the story we keep locked in our heads. We are the story we tell and communicate to the world. Whether that is through words, tone, actions, body language or facial expressions. When we become aware of our impact physically, emotionally and intellectually then we can start to manage how we show up in the world and we can bring our intention and impact closer and closer together.

System 2

The problem with solely focusing on intention is that we spend a lot of time operating on autopilot or what Daniel Kahneman calls ‘System 1’. According to Kahneman, System 1, sometimes known as intuitive thinking, “operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and sense of voluntary control.” Whereas System 2 “allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.” Switching on system 2 is what bridges the gap between intention and impact. However, operating with this much more conscious intentionality is tiring and time consuming. Autopilot is efficient and easy and will more often than not take over, which is why our intention and our impact are so often out of alignment. This is why awareness is only the first step.

Unconscious Bias

With autopilot comes unconscious bias, where our ‘unconscious intention’ will be dictated by unconscious beliefs. Not because we are a bad person. But because we have been conditioned and socialised in certain ways. We’ve just always done our presentations like that. That’s how our first boss did them when we started in our first job, so that’s how we learnt to do them and even though they are mediocre at best, we simply don’t know any other way. Similarly, unconscious bias – when it comes to gender or race or any other area- will be dictated by what we have absorbed up until that moment. From society, education, family, parents, peers, communities and our own continued self-reflection. Some of which may need some serious updating because it too may lead to some behaviours and impact that just isn’t good enough anymore.

Feedback

Feedback on our impact is vital if we really do want to close the gap between intention and impact and if we really do want to become the person, we know we can become and communicate at a whole new conscious level. (And this is also true for those of us who find positive feedback difficult to accept or believe!)

Being ashamed of receiving feedback on our impact is the very thing that will hold us back from becoming better. Whether that’s becoming a far better communicator or becoming far more conscious about daily micro-aggressions and learning how to simply stop doing them.

Feedback on our impact is precious. As writer, Robin di Angelo talks about in her book ‘White Fragility’ – feedback is hard to give and so we need to cherish it and thank the person giving us the feedback – for the courage they showed in giving it to us. When people stop giving you feedback on your impact, you should be worried. It means they are either frightened of your response or they have given up on caring about your human potential and development. Get feedback and get fabulous. You already are…you just might need to close the gap a little!

Impactful Awareness

Awareness is our superpower. It enables us to be curious and stay open to the idea that we may not be perfect. From here we can start to close the gap between our intention – how we think we’re being – and our impact – how others experience us.

From there we as individuals can then impact the wider system as we model a more conscious way of being and help others begin to do the same.

If you choose to be interested in growing, learning and welcoming of those who care enough about you and who trust you enough to offer up feedback, your intentions and impact will start to fall into alignment. From here, life will start to feel a little bit less like an uphill climb and more like a dance in the moment. It’s a day-to-day practice and a journey that will help you to become someone who can consciously create the impact you choose – every day!

5 Fresh Tips to make your Virtual Conference Hosting come alive

by Philippa Waller | Mar 12, 2020 | 4D Confidence & Impact Training, 4D Presentation Skills, 4D Virtual Impact

When you can’t physically bring your people together for your business conference you can still bring your business conference alive – and your people together…virtually.

And while a great tech platform is important to host your conference, the key to making your event engaging, impactful and memorable depends on the human host running the show.

With increasing pressure and restrictions around business budget, organisational travel and employee health and safety many companies are looking to run large scale events through virtual online streaming services. So how do you ensure your event, while virtual, is still energising, motivating and connecting? There are plenty of articles out there about the tech, timing and troubleshooting of hosting virtual conferences. To help you make sure the timing of your event is aligned for all the time zones you are dealing with. To ensure you have the appropriate technology and bandwidth to run your online sessions and finally to check you troubleshoot for potential process and platform glitches before you hit the live button.

YES…that’s all super important…AND…for us at 4D Human Being most conferences fall down once all these things have been checked, once the go-live button is pressed and then the energy drops to zero. Because even if you have the best platform hosting on the market, if you don’t have the right kind of ‘human hosting’ leading your conference, it’s all too easy for your virtual audience to switch off, drift away and go and do something less boring instead. Hosting Virtual Conferences requires a specific skill set, and drawing on our unique background in performance, acting, improvisation, TV, film, directing, storytelling, online training and coaching, here are our five top tips for giving your virtual event the wow factor – big on engagement, high on impact and unbeatable on online experience.

1. Navigate and Direct

Whether you are choosing to hire an expert host or using an in-house presenter, make sure your host is skilled at working online. People can be much more easily distracted when attending conferences remotely, so your host needs to navigate your audience through the agenda in a particularly concise and clear way. Tell your audience exactly which segments are happening when and what you will be expecting from them at various points through the schedule. Finally, keep them hooked in by letting them know the sections further down the line that are simply NOT TO BE MISSED. That if they drift off to grab a cup of coffee they may just miss the golden nuggets that are coming their way. Assume FROM THE GET GO that your audience will WANT TO SWITCH OFF OR leave the room and THAT THEREFORE IT’S UP TO YOU TO set a clear intention from the start to keep them glued to their seats

Also, be more directive with your hosting. When you are hosting live in a room with your audience you can ask more open, general or rhetorical questions and you can get away with a looser format as the energy in the room can fill the gap. But when it comes to hosting online events you need a host that understands how to clearly and tightly navigate your audience and be more directive with posing questions to guests or attendees. You can still, of course, have fun, engage and get people enjoying themselves, but you need to keep the event structured and scaffolded along the way. So instead of “Has anyone got any comments?” Try asking “Let’s hear one comment from each of you on that.”

2. Get Great Audio

While we as human beings are highly visual creatures, research reveals that the quality of your audio will influence whether your audience finds your content and messaging credible. “When the video was difficult to hear, viewers thought the talk was worse, the speaker less intelligent and less likeable and the research less important,” scientists wrote. So, when hosting a conference online we need to ensure our audio is as good as our visual equipment. If not better…as some people can actually tolerate poor video quality more than they can tolerate poor audio quality. Double the reason to maximise the sound quality of your virtual event.

3. Get Interactive

Hosting on the internet can still mean hosting interactively. Running a conference online doesn’t mean leaving your audience flatlined. Your host can still give your audience members a highly interactive experience. Pairs exercises and thought-provoking conversations and games will inject your sessions with the dynamic energy you are looking for. Making your virtual event highly memorable and practical. Your host can run short interactive, experiential exercises designed specifically for small remote working groups or individuals at their laptops at home. Meaning that a virtual conference can still feel truly connecting, intimate and personalised.

4. Energy Energy Energy

We are definitely obsessed with energy at 4D Human Being and when it comes to working online our obsession becomes fanatical! Your virtual conference host needs to be used to working on camera and needs to understand the power and dynamics of ‘Host Energy.’ Being a host in a live arena requires energy, but hosting online requires energy PLUS! The reality is that the camera sucks away 20% of your energy. So, as a virtual MC and host you need to up your energy level higher than you think might be necessary. It may only be one camera in front of you but it’s not one person…it’s one camera and hundreds or thousands of people all feeding off your brilliant hosting energy. And it’s your job to ensure your hosting feels connected, energised, personalised and really reaches into the offices, living rooms and workplaces of your attendees.

5. Feedback Loop

One of the most exciting things about hosting virtually is the opportunity it presents to create an instant feedback loop with your audience. Most platforms and tech include the possibility for your audience to do things like vote, chat and message the host and organisers in real time. This means that you can create a truly global and ‘live’ experience. Make sure your host has excellent improvisational skills and has humour and courage at their fingertips. Because then, they can flex and flow, incorporating comments and feedback into the conference in real time. Which simply put…for your audience…looks like genius.

These are some of the techniques that you can use to take your virtual hosting to a whole new level. You can find out more and sign up for our newsletter through our website as well as check out the 4D articles, podcasts, videos and online training programmes.

Good luck with your virtual event and if you’d like us at 4DHB to help you engage your audience, get your messages across online and have some fun…do get in touch.

4D Human Being – helping leaders, teams and individuals consciously communicate with impact every day.

Video Conferencing: You’ve got the tech. Now what…

by Matt Beresford | Mar 5, 2020 | 4D Confidence & Impact Training, 4D Presentation Skills, 4D Virtual Impact

The impact of the Coronavirus will be felt by all of us. Most importantly those people whose health will be affected. As an asthmatic, I watch the news with the same concern as many of you. Let us hope that the actions taken by governments and each one of us will save lives and get us back to normal soon.

There seems no doubt that the current situation will also accelerate the adoption of business tools for remote collaboration and communication. Indeed, we have seen our friends at Cisco offer free Webex licenses to help people stay connected during this challenging time.

This technology was already growing rapidly as a result of increased cost pressures, environmental concerns and the continuing improvement in what video conferencing and unified comms are capable of.

But are we making the most of the investment we have made?

For five years I worked with the irrepressible Mark Grady at Google, a superb team at Tech Data, and some terrific resellers to help build a B2B channel for Google’s video conferencing platform Hangouts Meet. We were also lucky enough to spend time collaborating on G Suite, which transformed the way our team worked internally, with partners and customers.

It’s clear that every major technology company has recognised this space as a huge opportunity – the large platform players like Cisco, Microsoft and Google have been jockeying for position for some time with Amazon’s Chime and Facebook’s Portal, Whatsapp Video Calling and Messenger gaining traction too. And that’s before we get to the other players like Zoom, Go To Meeting and the list goes on…

The immediate challenges business is facing – trying to keep employees productive, maintaining relationships with customers and partners, whilst also protecting the health of valued colleagues – is likely to see the requirement for remote working and Video Conferencing jump up the priority list for IT Directors and other Lines of Business leads.

My Linked In timeline is certainly busy with thought leaders and technology companies offering their perspectives on how businesses can meet the challenge.

What few people are talking about however is that, when it comes to successful virtual collaboration, it’s not enough to install and understand how to use the technology – we also need to get far better at understanding how to ‘be’ on a video conference call to make it successful.

What effect do we want to have? How do we want to make people feel? How can we maximise our personal impact to connect with people over video? How can we run a successful and productive virtual team meeting where people leave the call more motivated than when they joined it?

Like everyone else who has spent any time working in large corporations I have had my fair share of soul-destroying calls – the ones with no energy, no clarity of purpose and the ones where it feels most people are answering their emails…

At 4D we have been working with leading players in the technology sector for many years delivering a wide range of coaching and training courses centred on communication between human beings. We have seen the demand for how to maximise impact and improve the effectiveness in the virtual space grow enormously in the last few years.

We are continually asked:

How do we ensure that our attendees are engaged?
How do we keep the meeting focused?
How do we ensure that everyone understands the meeting’s purpose?
How do we use the visual and audio technology to best effect?

We have developed a series of online programmes focused on exactly these problems. These provide delegates with an opportunity to think about the energy they bring to virtual communication, the atmosphere they are trying to create and how to be more conscious of the way they guide meeting attendees through a call.

Whilst the courses are very experiential, we’d love to share some of our top tips with you here:

1. Cameras On! – so much of our impact is in our facial expressions and our gestures. If you remove this you are reducing your impact by a huge amount (perhaps more than 50%). If your company, or that call, doesn’t have ‘camera on culture’ you can be the person that makes an even stronger impact!

2. Framing – once your camera is on, be aware of the framing. How much of you is visible? What height is the camera set at? Would a separate webcam be helpful? How is the lighting? Is there a pile of washing behind you…?!

3. Navigation – are you helping to guide people through the call, being clear on what they can expect to get from it? Are you providing an agenda? Are you creating a positive, engaging atmosphere? What expectations of the attendees have you communicated to ensure that they will bring something to the call and not simply be passive observers?

4. Energy – at 4D we are energy obsessed! We talk about it all the time because it’s absolutely crucial in our interactions with other human beings. One of the biggest challenges on VC is the energy gradually dropping out of the call, with a lack of interaction and a feeling that people are becoming disengaged. In a virtual meeting, the energy of the host is crucial – we often need to use more energy than we think if we want to maintain high energy on a call – it can feel strange to push more energy in when the camera is only 50cm away from you, but it can be the difference between a call that keeps people engaged and one that leaves people drifting away. We use a couple of very simple tools to help hosts maintain their energy and the energy of the attendees.

Whatever platform you are using to equip your teams with the right technology to work remotely if you’d also like to ensure that your teams are trained in the best interpersonal tools and techniques to get the most from their fellow human beings, do get in touch with the team at 4D Human Being.

Whether through face to face workshops and training or via virtual coaching and webinars, we help leaders, teams and individuals consciously communicate with impact every day.